iPhone Tops Windows Mobile Share; MS Releases iPhone App

walterbyrd notes that new data from Gartner indicates that the successful launch of the iPhone 3G was enough to push iPhone market share over that of Windows Mobile devices — the entire range of them. And reader Spy Hunter writes: "Seadragon Mobile is Microsoft's first iPhone application. Seadragon is a technology for streaming zoomable user interfaces, and this iPhone incarnation allows viewing huge collections of gigapixel-sized images over WiFi or 3G. If you don't have an iPhone, you can also try Seadragon in your browser via Seadragon Ajax."

Comments

Innovation pays

[alain94040]

When Apple launched the iPhone two years ago, they announced that their goal was to ship 10 million iPhones by year end. Frankly, no one had any clue how many or how few would sell. It was just a guess on the part of Apple management (really!).

And somehow, they hit the number and blew past Microsoft smartphones, Nokia and blackberry. For once innovation pays, I love it. In he last 5 years I was involved as an engineer with some of the companies designing cell phones. Ground-breaking innovation is not in their DNA. Instead, they take last year's technology and make it 20% better and faster. Middle management has no clue how to foster innovation.

You need those companies around because they drive down cost and make technology accessible. But you also need a few Apples that forego incremental improvements and shoot for the moon.

--
French iPhone Apps review site applicationiphone.com looking for contributors

Re:Innovation pays

[Midnight Thunder]

Yup, it really is amazing. I don't think anyone could have guessed it would have done so well.

I wonder how much this says something about the iPhone and how much this says of the competition. Of the competition, the way I see them:
  - For me Windows mobile suffers from the fact it feel like a desktop OS shoe horned into a mobile device.
  - Palm lost focus and the separation of hardware into two separate companies that caused more problems than it solved. Then there was the fact they decided to go with Windows mobile.
  - RIM is still the better contender, but maybe purely focusing on a business solution limits the potential size of the market.
  - Android suffers from the fact they don't control the hardware, so the quality of the experience depends as much on the device manufacturers as the work Google does.

Re:Innovation pays

[Cyberax]

Android has good chances, but it has arrived a bit late. For most practical purposes it STILL has not arrived (G1 device is too 'niche').

Re:Innovation pays

[initialE]

Well the iPhone didn't stand a chance against Windows Mobile, because there were apps and apps for WM. There were apps for every kind of conceivable thing you could put on a mobile device. It was like... windows... You know you don't want it, you just don't have a choice because you needed your apps supported. Never mind it crashes all the time. Never mind you might miss important calls and never know it. It had app support.
Then what happened? Apple releases an SDK that enables rapid app development. They produce a storefront that enables you to hang out your hat almost immediately. They even provide back-end infrastructure for apps that need to do background communication. Once again, they are a major contender. And in record time.
My question is this: Do you see this happening for Android?

Re:Innovation pays

[Ethanol-fueled]

I hope that fanboi was joking. I just picked up a 2GB Sansa for 40 bucks at a Radio Shack sale.

It's like a cheaper, better version of the iPod shuffle(it's almost identical except that it's black and has an excellent 2-color backlit screen with neat animations and tons of configuration options) which costs much less than 2 gig shuffle($70) and it uses the mass-storage protocol(caveat: you must first set that option in the menu) so that I can copy and paste my music directly into it without having to install that godawful iTunes(and by extension Quicktime and other crappola.

My girlfriend bragged about getting an ipod shuffle and itunes gift cards for Christmas and I had a good chuckle before I explained to her the benefits of non-apple hardware...seeing people's eyes open is truly a beautiful thing.

I have to laugh at myself a little bit

[DJRumpy]

I originally laughed at the folks who stood in line days before the release to be sure to get the first ones out of the store. I thought it was insane to pay that much for a phone or to treat it like the latest Star Wars movie. That is until I got curious and watched a few demos on the apple site a few months after it's release. I had no idea that touch technology had gone so far, or that the folks at Apple had done it so well. I was simply floored.

The techie in me took over shortly after that, and I began losing sleep until I chose to go to the store and buy one (1st gen 2G).

It's been an odd journey for me. I was a Windows guy. Not a fan by any means as their pricing and licensing infuriates me, but I didn't use any other OS as a primary.

Since my iPhone purchase, I have since purchased my first Macbook Pro, and bought my second 3G iPhone. Don't get me wrong. I see the same sort of corporate headedness from Apple that I saw from MS. Maybe not as extreme in most cases, but it's there. That being said, Apple does do things in a very polished manner which makes the attempts to lock you into Apple much less 'painful'. I just don't know how else to describe it.

All because I had to get curious about what the fascination was all about.

Kudos on what has to be one of the most innovative and most duplicated pieces of tech for the last few years running.

Re:iPhone achilles' heel

[Gordo_1]

Well, you know you're probably right to an extent. But the flip side to the arrogance shown developers is that Apple has managed to centralize, simplify and ensure a certain quality of apps for users. Apple has the upper hand right now because they've attracted a lot of eyeballs by addressing problems that no other cell phone company seemed able to address. Time will tell whether their arrogance will hinder them.

As a dedicated Blackberry Bold user myself (who regularly plays around with his girlfriend's iPhone 3G) I am left with a distinct 'last-generation' feeling when it comes to finding, installing and using apps designed for the blackberry. Of the ones that I manage to install (typically OTA via sms-sent URLs), many are designed for last-generation low-rez BBs or are converted java-midp apps that don't map navigation keys the same way RIM does... Or they're very buggy, or cause the OS to crash. Don't get me wrong, it's a plenty usable email device and good mobile phone, but it's missing a certain attention to detail when it comes to end-to-end user experience that Apple seems to have achieved with the iPhone and App Store.